Facebook Unveils New Music Feature

Facebook announced "Music Stories" this morning, a way for Facebook users to share their favorite songs and find new music using the recommendations of their friends and their own preferences. In what is basically a new posting format, the Music Stories feature will work with Spotify and Apple Music, to begin with, and will provide a 30 second preview of whatever the person posts. The song will play right from Facebook and won't take them anywhere else.

The music actually streams from Spotify or Apple Music, and those who do listen to it can choose to buy it from the streaming service. This is just the start and there will be more features added shortly.

”We’re excited to be a part of Music Stories with Facebook and provide Spotify listeners with a more engaging and simple way to listen to, discover and share music they love,” said Jorge Espinel, Head of Global Business Development at Spotify, in a statement. “Music Stories are a great way for people to continue bringing Spotify into the conversation on Facebook.”

This new feature is only available, for now, on Facebook's iPhone app, but it will likely to expand to other platforms if it takes off. It is likely the connection with iTunes that made the connection with Apple. Facebook hasn't confirmed when it would make the move to Android.

For its part, Facebook has never really been heavily focused on musicians like other social media networks. The big platform before Facebook, Myspace, was all about music. Now Facebook has a chance to revolutionize what they are doing. Even better, the people who use it to post songs will then get suggestions about other songs or artists they may like.

Usage is simple: copy and paste the link into your status bar and the song will pop up - much like YouTube videos do now.